Tuesday" in Dixie could reshape the nominating process

The last time the Southern states formally banded together to assert their political will, the Civil War broke out. Nothing quite so cataclysmic is likely to ensue from Dixie's creation of a "Mega Tuesday," the first great regional primary. But the rush of Southern and Border states to join in a plan to hold primaries on the same Tuesday early in the 1988 election season--March 8, to be precise--could produce the greatest change in the way party nominees are chosen since the reform movement of the 1970s.

For the past two decades, Southern political leaders as divergent as Jimmy Carter and...